Climate 411

In 1990, while I was busy with kid priorities like learning to roller-skate, Congress was updating the Clean Air Act – kicking off a process to reduce mercury and other air toxic air pollution from coal-fired power plants.

Unfortunately, after that 20-year journey to get strong protections against mercury pollution, the Trump Administration is now trying to move us backward.

Trump’s Acting Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Andrew Wheeler has confirmed that he’s “reconsidering” the legal foundation of the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards – a move that could allow him to topple our national safeguards against the pollution linked to cancer, lung disease, and brain damage in babies.

The Clean Air Act has a long, well-documented history of reducing pollution, and thus improving – and often even saving – lives in America.

This bedrock law represents one of the greatest environmental and health success stories in the world. Gross Domestic Product in the U.S. has grown 246 percent over the life of the Clean Air Act while at the same time pollutants have been reduced 71 percent.

The Clean Air Act has led to enormous innovation in technology

The Clean Air Act has helped launch innovation in technologies that reduce pollution –technologies which in many cases can be exported around the world.

We know from previous experience with standards we adopted to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions from power plants in 1971 and 1979 that pollution standards can reduce emissions substantially, and that the more the technology is deployed to meet the standards the more costs go down. The Clean Air Act helped create a market demand for various pollution control technologies by creating standards for pollutants, including for sulfur dioxide. (Read more from technology experts who filed a legal brief in support of carbon standards for power plants)

Source: The Effect of Government Actions on Technological Innovation for SO2 Control. The EPA/DOE/EPRI Mega Symposium, August 20-23, 2001.

America’s homegrown environmental protection industry

The U.S. is the single largest producer of environmental technologies in the world, capturing 29 percent of the world’s $1.05 trillion market.

In 2015, there were an estimated 1.73 million jobs in the U.S. environmental industry, with projected growth of 3 to 4 percent over the next several years.

According to the U.S. government, 99 percent of the businesses in this industry were small to medium-sized. U.S. environmental companies exported about $48 billion in goods in 2013. At the same time, 2005 data from U.S. manufacturers indicate that their expenses for reducing pollution account for less than one percent of the value of the goods they ship.

Environmental protection standards can drive jobs in a myriad of sectors including manufacturing, engineering, construction, operations, and more.

Some examples of jobs and industries created by specific EPA clean air protections include:

Compliance with the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards was expected to create a net 84,500 jobs in the utility sector and as a result of pollution abatement and control investments.

Clean air saves lives and improves productivity

Cleaner air saves lives and protects the health of American families.

According to a landmark analysis, in 2010 alone the Clean Air Act prevented 160,000 deaths.

It also prevented 13 million lost workdays and 3.2 million lost school days because of illnesses and diseases caused or exacerbated by air pollution. The value of avoiding those lost work and school days in 2010 was approximately $2 billion.

That same landmark analysis estimates that the central benefits of the Clean Air Act outweigh costs by more than 30 to one.

Twenty-six. That is how many smog-related air quality alerts were forecast across our country for one single day earlier this week.

From Pennsylvania to Rhode Island, “action days” were called urging “sensitive groups” (including children, people who are active outdoors, older Americans, and people with heart or lung disease) to reduce their time spent outdoors.

Smog is a dangerous air pollutant linked to premature deaths, asthma attacks, lower birth weight in infants, and serious heart and lung diseases.

Smog forms when industrial emissions from power plants, factories, cars, and other sources react with heat and sunlight in the atmosphere.

There have already been many alerts across the U.S. this year for smog pollution, and “smog season” has just begun. That shows we have more work to do to clean the air and protect our families and communities.

That is why it is disturbing to hear that EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has decided to delay implementation of the updated smog standards by one year.

According to the American Lung Association’s 2017 State of the Air Report [PDF], more than one-third of all Americans live in areas with unhealthful levels of smog. More than 116 million people live in counties that received a grade of “F” for smog levels.

A one-year delay in the implementation of anticipated pollution from the smog standards would mean:

660 more deaths

230,000 asthma attacks among children

180,000 missed work or school days

These are real lives being affected by Administrator Pruitt’s irresponsible actions.

The smog standards are driven by medical science. Here are some of the medical and health associations that supported strengthening the ozone standards:

The American Thoracic Society

American Academy of Pediatrics

American Medical Association

American Heart Association

American Lung Association

American Public Health Association

Children’s Environmental Health Network

National Association of County and City Health Officials

Trust for America’s Health

Health Care Without Harm

Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America

American College of Chest Physicians

American College of Preventive Medicine

American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine

American Association of Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Rehabilitation

National Association for the Medical Direction of Respiratory Care

Society of Physicians for Social Responsibility

EPA’s mission is to protect public health and the environment. Administrator Pruitt’s decision to delay the smog standards runs counter to that bi-partisan, four-and-a-half decade mission. It also runs counter to the recommendations of leading medical and public health associations.

The successful history of implementing the Clean Air Act shows that states have the flexibility to design tailored solutions to address smog pollution, and that dramatic pollution reductions go hand-in-hand with a strong economy.

We need to reduce the amount of smog in our air – and to achieve that goal, we need EPA to lead.

This weekend is Memorial Day – the unofficial start to summer. That means kids across the country – and adults too – are counting down the days until summer vacation.

Whether your plans include going to a beach, visiting a national park, or just letting your kids play outside in the sprinklers, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) plays an important role in making your summer healthier and safer – in ways you might not realize.

Here are four examples of how EPA improves summers for all Americans:

Reducing deadly smog

Smog comes from pollution emitted from cars, power plants, and other sources. It can lead to asthma attacks, heart attacks and even deaths.

The summer smog season has already started in most parts of the country. A number of “code orange” days – the terms for days when the air may be too dangerous for some people, like children with asthma and seniors with heart conditions, to be outdoors – have already been issued.

Smog has improved significantly in recent decades, thanks to EPA and state leadership, but air quality in the U.S. continues to be a serious problem that can jeopardize public health and limit many individuals’ freedom to spend time outdoors. The American Lung Association estimates that more than a third of Americans live in areas with unhealthy levels of smog.

EPA has worked for decades to reduce smog, most recently when the agency issued new standards for smog in 2015. Once they’re in effect, those standards will prevent 230,000 asthma attacks among children every year. That doesn’t include the benefits for California, which EPA calculated separately – the smog standards will prevent another 160,000 asthma attacks among children in that state alone.

Los Angeles now — Alamy

Unfortunately, smog standards are under attack in Congress. Several bills to delay and fundamentally alter how these and other air pollution standards are set are now moving through the Senate. Additionally, President Trump’s proposed budget for 2018 cuts funding for the air monitoring that warns families about “Code Red” and “Code Orange” days – the days when air quality reaches unhealthy levels – by almost one third.

Safer, cleaner beaches

Many of us look forward to summer for the opportunity to spend time on the beach.

Last year, U.S. beach attendance was almost 360 million (more than the entire U.S. population!).

An analysis done by the Natural Resources Defense Council a few years ago looked at water samples from 3,485 coastal U.S. beaches – and found that 10 percent of them were above EPA’s benchmark for swimmer safety. The analysis also notes that an estimated 3.5 million people are sickened every year from contact with raw sewage.

EPA – in partnership with states, local governments, and others – works to protect our nation’s beaches. The agency enforces laws and administers programs that regulate sources of water pollution at beaches, conducts leading scientific research on pathogens and sets national standards and criteria, funds grants to states and local governments to help protect our beaches, provides information to the public about water quality, and more. This work helps ensure that America’s beaches stay safe, clean, and open for visitors.

Here are a few examples of beach monitoring and cleanup grants distributed by EPA:

Lakeview Beach Green Infrastructure Project in the Great Lakes. The City of Lorain, Ohio got a $250,000 grant to construct a “green” stormwater treatment system at the city’s Lakeview Park, located on Lake Erie. The new system will reduce the E. coli bacteria in stormwater from being directly discharged into Lake Erie at Lakeview Beach, and will reduce the frequency of bacteria-related beach closures.

President Trump’s proposed budget for EPA would eliminate the beach monitoring grants program, among many other things that could impact the health of our nation’s beaches.

Cleaning up the air in our national parks

Shenandoah National Park on a clear day and a hazy day — National Park Service

National parks are a popular destination for summer vacationers across the country.

According to the National Park Service, there were over 307 million visits to our national parks last year and those visitors spent $16.9 billion in surrounding communities. This spending supported 295,000 jobs and contributed $32 billion to economic output nationally.

EPA and other agencies monitor visibility at 155 national parks and wilderness areas across the country. Unfortunately, many national parks suffer from haze – a form of pollution – that can tarnish scenic vistas and create health problems for visitors.

EPA’s work to reduce the pollution affecting our parks is under threat by Administrator Scott Pruitt, who sued EPA over a plan to reduce haze when he was Attorney General of Oklahoma.

Reducing the pollution contributing to climate change

Climate change affects virtually every facet of our lives and can exacerbate all of the problems listed above – more smoggy days, rising sea levels and more pathogens potentially spreading at beaches, and worse haze in our parks.

Extreme summer heat can also cause illness and death, and climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of those potentially deadly heat waves.

EPA has provided essential leadership to address climate change – including setting standards that would reduce pollution from power plants, cars, trucks, oil and gas operations, and more. Actions underway by EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt and severe budget cuts in President Trump’s proposed EPA budget could significantly harm the progress we’ve made and delay urgently needed protections for public health and our climate.

President Trump and Administrator Pruitt have indicated they will seek to unravel numerous climate protections, including the Clean Power Plan. Their proposed budget for EPA and other agencies undermines climate research and policies, including by zeroing out the U.S. Climate Action Plan.

Protecting the things that we love about summer

EPA’s work protects our air, our water, our beautiful beaches and parks – and most important, the health and safety of our families. As you enjoy your summer, please remember how important it is to protect the qualities that make summer great.

We need a strong EPA – now and all year long. More than just our summers are at stake.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) critical mission to protect health and the environment is strongly supported by the public, which is why it is incredibly alarming to see that President’s Trump’s new “skinny budget” would cut EPA’s funding by 31 percent.

Half of EPA’s budget goes to states, tribes, local agencies, and non-profits, which help carry out EPA’s lifesaving mission and provide significant benefits to communities in the process. EPA also provides essential technical guidance, assistance, scientific research, coordination, and more to help states and others protect health and the environment. Budget cuts to EPA would jeopardize Americans’ health and the safety of their communities.

In addition to the vital programs that protect our air and water, these are a few examples of programs that EPA oversees – and that are now at risk.

Cleaning Up Pollution from School Buses

School buses take 25 million American children to and from school every day. Many of these buses are old and their exhaust includes harmful pollutants like nitrogen oxides, particulate matter, and toxics.

Children are particularly vulnerable to pollution given their faster breathing rates and developing respiratory systems. Exposure to this pollution can aggravate asthma and cause other health problems.

Newer diesel engines are 90 percent cleaner than the old ones, however. So EPA administers a program for school districts to help them fix the problem. School districts can apply for rebates to replace or retrofit older buses under the Diesel Emissions Reduction Act (DERA) – a broadly bi-partisan program enacted by Congress. More than 500 school districts applied for this program in 2016 and 88 school bus fleets from 27 states were selected. More than 400 older diesel buses will be retrofitted or replaced thanks to DERA.

The 2016 grant recipients include:

Marana Unified School District #6 in Arizona, which received $465,000 to replace or retrofit 20 buses

Three school districts in Michigan (Haslett, Hudsonville, and Whittemore) that received $180,000 for nine buses

Three school districts in Pennsylvania (Carlisle, Glenmoore, and Philadelphia) that received $305,000 for 17 buses

The school bus program provides essential funding to school districts that need it. And we know that cleaning up buses is working – a recent study found that children in schools that had adopted cleaner fuels and technology were absent less and had improved lung function. Experts estimate that there are 250,000 older, dirtier school buses still in operation, indicating that we – and EPA – have much more work to do to protect children’s health.

(The school bus program is just one part of the DERA program to reduce diesel emissions. Find total DERA allocations to all states, from 2012-2016, here.)

Chesapeake Bay Program

The Chesapeake Bay ecosystem provides more than $100 billion in economic benefits each year to the region’s 18 million residents, yet has for years been threatened by air and water pollution.

The Chesapeake Bay Program, created in 1983, is a partnership of six states (Delaware, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia), the District of Columbia, the federal government, and numerous local governments and NGOs dedicated to restoring this iconic feature of the Mid-Atlantic.

EPA plays a vital coordination and technical advisory role for the Chesapeake Bay Program, setting goals and assisting local jurisdictions’ efforts to meet them. About two-thirds of the $70 million or so EPA dedicates to the Chesapeake Bay Program flows to state and local governments as grants.

Successful — yet ongoing — cleanup efforts include:

Between 1985 and 2015, the Chesapeake Bay Program has reduced harmful nitrogen water pollution by 30 percent, phosphorus by 40 percent, and sediment by 25 percent.

The outlook for fish and blue crab habitats, as well as key wetlands and underwater grasses, is also improving.

A new agreement signed in 2014 launched a more robust, accelerated restoration pathway that is still being implemented and just starting to show signs of progress.

Budget cuts to the Chesapeake Bay Program would jeopardize these encouraging trends.

There are almost half a million Brownfields sites across the country. EPA provides technical assistance and administers several grant programs for states, local governments, and tribes to clean these sites up, conduct assessments, do job training, develop plans for use of the properties, and more.

These projects not only protect a community’s health and citizens, they also provide valuable economic and societal benefits by bolstering redevelopment efforts in existing communities —turning abandoned properties and eyesores into engines for job creation and economic growth.

In fiscal year 2016, projects created $16.11 per EPA dollar expended. Brownfields projects have overall created more than 117,000 jobs nationwide and have been found to increase residential property values near a Brownfields site by as much as 15.2 percent when a cleanup is completed.

A few projects funded or completed include:

$600,000 awarded for cleanup of a former tannery in Berwick, Maine. The vacant property was used for 100 years for leather tanning, woolen milling, and shoe and carriage manufacturing. Contaminants include VOCs, PAHs, and metals in soil and groundwater.

In Shelby, Montana, a largely abandoned historic school building was assessed for environmental issues, and asbestos and lead were cleaned up as part of a $200,000 EPA grant. The school was turned into a community center and was estimated to create 15 permanent jobs.

With $250,000 in EPA grant funding, the town of Fletcher, North Carolina turned a former log home manufacturing facility into a town hall. The project included clean-up of dioxin (a chemical that can cause reproductive and developmental problems and cancer) and pentachlorophenol (a chemical associated with cancer and other harmful impacts to human health).

According to EPA and U.S. Census data, approximately 104 million people (one-third of the U.S. population) live within three miles of a Brownfields site that received EPA funding, including more than one-third of all children under the age of five.

Reducing Lead

Thanks to the EPA’s decades-long effort to address the threat of lead pollution, blood lead levels across the country have declined more than 90 percent since the mid-1970s (see this interactive EDF graphic to learn more about the policies that helped). These efforts have protected countless children from the lifelong burden of diminished IQ from early childhood lead exposure.

However, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at least four million households have children living in them who are still being exposed to high levels of lead —highlighting the need for continued EPA efforts and funding in this area.

Over the past five decades, EPA has worked to reduce or eliminate the use of lead in gasoline, paint, plumbing pipes, and soil. EPA provides lead reduction grants to states, territories, and tribes to help them implement programs to mitigate lead-based paint in homes. EPA also conducts extensive outreach to educate the public about the health risks of lead exposure, and manages a national certification program for contractors who work on homes containing lead. Last year, EPA took more than 100 enforcement actions to require property managers and contractors to protect vulnerable communities from the dangers of lead.

A few examples of funded EPA programs include:

$243,007 awarded to the Arkansas Department of Health to administer and enforce the state’s lead based paint program, which will support training for lead inspectors and lead enforcement activities, and will help protect children from lead poisoning.

One of EPA’s regional offices (representing Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, New Mexico and 66 tribes) provided $898,384 in grants for work on lead abatement programs, which include providing training for lead inspectors, conducting outreach, conducting inspections of contractors engaged in lead-based paint abatement activities, and enforcement action.

These programs are just a small snapshot of the lifesaving programs EPA implements to protect public health. Programs like these could be completely eliminated or severely cut if the “skinny budget” is adopted by Congress.

Details of President Trump’s budget for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have started leaking out — and they are alarming, to say the least.

The reported budget cuts outline a disturbingly stark vision for the nation’s guardians of human health and the environment, cutting EPA staff by one-fifth and resources by 25 percent.

This budget would reportedly slash funding to restore the Great Lakes and the Chesapeake Bay, for state air quality grants, for environmental justice programs, for safe drinking water grants to states, and much more.

It would also reportedly gut EPA’s Office of Research and Development, the office responsible for guiding the agency’s approach to science. The Office of Research and Development includes vital work like the Safe and Sustainable Water Resources program.

This short-sighted budget proposal would mean dirtier air and water. It would mean more deaths among American citizens, and more asthma attacks among American children.

That’s why reports of a budget proposal this alarming has drawn criticism from all corners of America, from red and blue states alike.

I haven’t met a Republican or Democrat yet that wants to drink dirty water or breathe dirty air.

Members of Congress from both parties, former EPA administrators serving under both Republican and Democratic Presidents, experts from state and local air agencies, environmental justice groups, and others all agree:

A strong and credible regulatory regime is essential to the smooth functioning of our economy… Budget cuts that hurt programs that states now have in place to meet those duties run the risk of returning us to a time when some states offered industries a free lunch, creating havens for polluters. This could leave states with strong environmental programs supported by the public at a competitive disadvantage compared to states with weak programs. In other words, it could lead to a race to the bottom.

This budget is a fantasy if the administration believes it will preserve EPA’s mission to protect public health… It ignores the need to invest in science and to implement the law… It ignores the lessons of history that led to EPA’s creation 46 years ago. And it ignores the American people calling for its continued support … This is actually going to be devastating for the agency’s ability to protect public health.

No mom — whether Republican, Democrat, or Independent — voted for air pollution. No mom voted for anything that would endanger her children’s health. We’ve come a long way in cleaning up air pollution, and cutting back EPA’s efforts to enforce the rules that protect us — in favor of polluters’ profits — runs completely against what mothers and fathers across the country want: safe and clean air.

These cuts, if enacted by Congress, will rip the heart and soul out of the national air pollution control program and jeopardize the health and welfare of tens of millions of people around the country… I can guarantee with certainty that at least in the air pollution area, there will be many more people who will die prematurely and tens of thousands, perhaps millions more, who will get sick unnecessarily… [the cuts will have] a direct and serious adverse health impact on almost every major metropolitan area in the country.

EPA has been cut by over 20 percent in the last few years. The discretionary budget has been lowered pretty dramatically compared to how it was in 2009, and it’s under what [Speaker] Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) thought it would be in his budget.

[W]e’re not going to let that happen, we’re going to continue to oppose cuts to the [Great Lakes Restoration Initiative] and we’re going to mobilize our voting forces to let them know that this isn’t going to stand.

[Proposed cuts to the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative are] outrageous … this initiative has been critical to cleaning up our Great Lakes and waterways, restoring fish and wildlife habitats, and fighting invasive species, like Asian carp… I call on President Trump to reverse course on these harmful decisions.

It would cut across every area of our work… It would hurt the people who look to [our] programs for protecting the quality of their health and the quality of the places they live… We need people to understand that this work is not just … abstract, these are all people and places that are at some level of risk.

Slashing funding for programs that are proven to save lives is a disastrous strategy; cuts to key lung health programs at EPA and HHS make Americans less secure and less protected from known health threats such as the next influenza pandemic and air pollution. Our nation’s scientists and doctors will be less likely to find cures and better treatments for the millions of Americans with lung cancer, COPD and asthma.

Clean air, water, and other environmental safeguards are essential to Americans’ lives. The vast majority of Americans across the country support EPA’s mission – a mission the agency has been carrying out under both political parties for almost half a century, and one that that has led to incredible progress in cleaning and protecting our air and waters.